STATE OF THE ART
It is the general goal of fibre processing in the blowroom to enhance production and the degree of cleaning and to process the material gently minimising losses of good fibre content. The problems involved have been mentioned often in the (patent) literature, see e.g. DE-C-3490510 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,060).
In principle, the fibre material is cleaned in the blowroom in at least one "cleaner" before being transferred to carding. As to the lay-out of cleaners, no consistent agreement prevails. There are tendencies, however, to unite the cleaning processes "in one single machine" as far as possible--see e.g. AT-C-231054, DE-A2939861 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,345,356) and DE-A-4039773 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,652).
A cleaning line delivers fibre material to a predetermined number (e.g. twelve) cards. The line must be laid out in such a manner that the maximum throughput demand by the cards associated thereto can be satisfied. As the processing capacity of the individual card increases, the processing capacity of the cleaning line is to be adapted accordingly (i.e. a reduction in the number of cards associated with a cleaning line is undesirable).